Rise in heart disease, death drops

Heart disease is on the increase - but fewer people are dying from it, figures will show today.

However, the falling death rate from coronary heart disease (CHD) in Britain could be reversed by the nation's obesity timebomb, it was warned.

Almost one in eight people has been diagnosed with a disease of the heart or circulatory system - up from one in 14 in 1989. Yet the number of deaths from CHD fell from 121,000 in 2001 to 117,500 two years ago.

The 2.7million people with heart disease do not include the millions who do not know they have blocked arteries, the British Heart Foundation said.

Despite the drop, Britain's death rate is still one of the highest in Western Europe - only Finland and Ireland are worse - and heart disease costs the economy more than £5billion a year.

Prof Sir Charles George, medical director of the BHF, said: 'The sad fact is one person every two minutes suffers a heart attack in the UK. That number looks likely to rise if we allow complacency and inactivity to ruin our lives.' Publishing its figures at the start of Heart Week 2004, the BHF said only a third of men and a quarter of women took the recommended 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times a week. In ten years the proportion of obese adults has risen from 14 per cent to 22 per cent - the fastest growing rate in the developed world.